Diffusion Monte Carlo method for barrier heights of multiple proton exchanges and complexation energies in small water, ammonia, and hydrogen fluoride clusters

Proton exchange reactions are of key importance in many processes in water. However, it is nontrivial to achieve reliable barrier heights for multiple proton exchanges and complexation energies in hydrogen-bonded systems theoretically. Performance of the fixed-node diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) with the single-Slater-Jastrow trial wavefunction on total energies, barrier heights of multiple proton exchanges, and complexation energies of small water, ammonia, and hydrogen fluoride clusters is investigated in this study. Effects of basis sets and those of locality approximation (LA), T-move approximation (T-move), and determinant localization approximation (DLA) schemes in dealing with the nonlocal part of pseudopotentials on FN-DMC results are evaluated. According to our results, diffuse basis functions are important in achieving reliable barrier heights and complexation energies with FN-DMC, although the cardinal number of the basis set is more important than diffuse basis functions on total energies of these systems. Our results also show that the time step bias with DLA and LA is smaller than T-move; however, the time step bias of DMC energies with respect to time steps using the T-move is roughly linear up to 0.06 a.u., while this is not the case with LA and DLA. Barrier heights and complexation energies with FN-DMC using these three schemes are always within chemical accuracy. Taking into account the fact that T-move and DLA are typically more stable than LA, FN-DMC calculations with the T-move or DLA scheme and basis sets containing diffuse basis functions are suggested for barrier heights of multiple proton exchanges and complexation energies of hydrogen-bonded clusters.